


The Story Wherein Bobby Crosby Loses His Fucking Mind

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-11
Updated: 2011-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder kept saying "last time," and eventually it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Story Wherein Bobby Crosby Loses His Fucking Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted February 2005.

The Story Wherein Bobby Crosby Loses His Fucking Mind  
By Candle Beck

They were in Cleveland, not yet late season but pretty close, and Mulder was sitting on the floor in the hotel hallway, a bottle of water from the vending machine between his feet, his head back on the wall.

Crosby was after some ice for his knee, and he put the bucket on the ground, crouched next to Mulder, who grinned up at him, eyes half-closed and damp.

“Hi there.”

“Dude,” Mulder said slowly. “It’s really important that you give me six hundred dollars.”

Crosby rolled his eyes, hauled him up by the arm, and put him to bed. He unbuckled Mulder’s belt, measuring each breath, rolled him over to get it off. Mulder snickered and pushed his face into the pillow, and Crosby concentrated on not dislocating his shoulder while pulling Mulder’s T-shirt off, and tried not to touch too much.

He tossed Mulder’s shirt at the roller suitcase on the floor, and patted Mulder on the head, murmuring something indistinct. He looked briefly at Mulder’s back and shoulder, this kind of perfect thing to see, to be this close to, and then cleared his throat, turned to go.

Mulder caught his wrist and pulled him back around. “Wait, hey,” he said with his voice weirdly high, breathy. Mulder grinned again, and slid his other hand up the leg of Crosby’s athletic shorts.

“Just once, okay?”

Crosby closed his eyes and swallowed hard and he didn’t realize he’d been so obvious.

They fucked very quickly and without much skill, and if Crosby hadn’t been wishing for this since spring training (even longer, it seemed sometimes, his whole life, maybe, as punk as that sounded), he probably would have been disappointed. As it was, though, he was mainly stunned and impossibly caught up in every moment of it.

Afterwards, Crosby couldn’t figure out how to go to sleep with Mulder right there beside him, big and heavy and breathing through his mouth. He sat in the armchair all night, listening to trance on Mulder’s headphones and staring at the ceiling.

He took off before the sun came up.

*

Mulder didn’t say anything about it. Didn’t even look at him, but that wasn’t new. Mulder had stopped looking at him a few weeks ago.

Crosby’s knee hurt. He should have iced it last night, he was so fucking stupid. Zito pitched and Mulder sat next to Rich Harden and discussed every breath Zito took. In five days, they’d be back home. Crosby wasn’t exactly looking forward to that.

It felt like he’d had a hole blown in his walls, and now everyone could see everything. He’d been doing so good. Four months living in the same house and the way Mulder had looked in late May, and Crosby had never even so much as stumbled.

Fucking Mark Mulder.

The night before getaway day, they went to a bar, a whole lot of them, and after a long time and a lot of liquor, Mulder slid into the booth next to Crosby and whispered into his ear, “Seriously, last time,” with his hand under the tablecloth, skimming under Crosby’s shirt.

Crosby made some little noise, like, what the fuck, _here_? right here, really? but Mulder just thumbed open the button of his jeans and didn’t look at him anymore. Mulder kept his eyes forward and Crosby jerked back against the booth as subtly as possible. Right in the middle, Zito thumped down on Mulder’s other side and Crosby clawed at Mulder’s arm under the table in a panic, but Mulder just started talking to Zito like it was nothing, like his hand wasn’t down Crosby’s pants. It was unbelievable. Crosby drew blood on the inside of Mulder’s wrist with his nails, just because that was the only part of Mulder he could touch.

Crosby got him back in the bathroom of Mulder’s hotel room, perfecting this with his knee fucking screaming and Mulder’s hip in his hand, and Mulder let Crosby borrow his toothbrush to get the taste out of his mouth, then kicked him out.

Crosby slept on the flight back home, and they didn’t even ride the same cab back to their house.

*

Just about a week after the last time, Zito came home with Harden, spilling in behind him with his hand clutched in the back of Harden’s shirt. By the time Mulder got back from the all-night, Zito was sitting with his back against the couch and his head resting on the cushion, his legs spread in a wide vee. Mulder sat with his knee against Zito’s shoulder, using Zito’s head as a place to put his drink.

Harden sort of curled up near the wall and Crosby stuck a phone message in his shirt collar, then slumped down on the other end of the couch.

It was a half-hour of ‘I Love the ‘80s’ before Crosby noticed that Mulder’s fingers were messing with the short hair at the back of Zito’s head, and Zito’s eyes were glazed over like when he was listening to music.

Crosby thought about reaching out and grabbing Mulder’s arm, maybe Mulder didn’t realize what he was doing, but then Mulder’s fingers carefully touched the knobs of Zito’s spine, tracing around, and Crosby got up, got the fuck out of there.

The next day, Mark Ellis, pale, injured Mark Ellis, will fill him in on the whole Mulder and Zito saga.

There were unfounded rumors about hotel rooms in New York City and back alleys in Chicago, dating back to 2001, and one incontrovertible night that half the team had been there for, when Mulder and Zito were screaming at each other on the back patio, cocksucker and motherfucker and it wasn’t supposed to _be_ like this, and then, somehow, absurdly, Zito slapped Mulder open-palmed across the face.

Ellis will wrap his shoulder a bit tighter, and tell Crosby about the two of them standing there on the patio in the salt lights, staring at each other in shock with Mulder’s cheek brightening. The moment right after, when it was entirely quiet and still, before Zito had turned and left through the back gate, leaving his guitar on the living room floor and his favorite hoodie on Mulder’s bed.

But apparently no matter what they did, they couldn’t shake it. Zito and Mulder both had a tendency to not recognize warning signs, or to assume that warnings didn’t apply to them, and there was still a lot of time left to kill.

So here it was however many years later, and Crosby was listening intently for the sound of the front door closing, and watching out his window for the motion sensor lights in the driveway, but the only thing he heard that night was Mulder’s door being shut and locked, and the only light in the whole world was the alarm clock on Bobby Crosby’s night-table.

*

A couple of nights later, Crosby was long asleep when Mulder tried to climb into his bed.

Mulder’s knee dug into Crosby’s side and Crosby wrenched awake, shouting, “Fuck!” and knocking Mulder onto the floor.

Mulder punched the side of the bed and hissed, “fucking shhh, fuck.”

Crosby leaned over, fearful and his chest hurting. “What are you doing?” he whispered, clenching his hands in the sheets. Mulder was wavering, down there on the floor, rocking back and forth like a ship. Bobby could smell beer and the slick chemical scent of the shit Mulder used in his hair.

“God,” Crosby muttered, and fell back, staring at the ceiling. Mulder got up on his knees and loomed over him, smiling and pushing the sheet away, his hands on Crosby’s chest and stomach.

“One more-” Mulder started to say, but Crosby smacked his hands away and then shoved Mulder awkwardly from his back.

“No. Okay? Fuck off.”

“Dude, it’s just one more time,” Mulder told him, his eyes all earnest and focused on Crosby’s body, licking his lips and reaching for him again.

Crosby wished he was the kind of man who could get up and storm out, slam the door and crack the hinges and leave no evidence behind except the drunk guy on the floor of his room. He wished he was the kind of man who could just roll over and put his back to all this.

“Go fuck Zito, why don’t you,” he said, his mouth twisting.

Mulder’s face clouded, gray across his eyes and lines on his forehead. He shook his head, dragged his hand across Crosby’s stomach. “Don’t want Zito anymore,” he mumbled, bending down. “Want you.”

Crosby put his arm up over his face so that colors would go off behind his eyes. How could anyone think that he’d be able to turn this down? Nobody was that strong. Crosby found the back of Mulder’s head with his hand and arched up a little when Mulder opened his mouth on his stomach, and figured, ‘fuck. take what you can get, right?’

*

There was that for awhile, and eventually Mulder stopped saying “last time” and stopped saying anything else too, stayed quiet and drunk-hot, sliding into him at odd angles and odd times of day.

And the other thing that was happening, the thing that was not Mulder and not Mulder’s fucking hands, the _baseball_ thing, it was staggering pretty hard. Crosby hadn’t really hit all that well for about a month now, the space between his shoulder blades throbbed and nothing gave itself away to him.

Crosby didn’t actually think about it all that much, weirdly, he didn’t think about anything, but when he did, he decided that it was only fair. Something elemental had happened to him—it should show in every second of his life. And nowhere more than here.

It was like a bomb had been set off.

He could remember what it’d been like early in the season, when every pitch found his bat and he could outrun anything. He could remember the pretty girls with his name across the fronts of their shirts, and the cheer when they announced him, and Mulder telling him, “they all come out to see you,” and that wasn’t true at all, because he wasn’t even the biggest fan favorite on the team, but it felt pretty real, back in June when he could do no wrong.

Anyway, it wasn’t until two days into September that he finally cornered Zito. He didn’t know what he expected, or wanted, really, it was just kind of spur of the moment.

Out by the bullpen at the Coliseum, the cruddy little plywood overhang above the bench, where Zito had his towel and water bottle, and Crosby waited out there until Zito trotted over after long toss and looked at him sidelong as he took a drink.

“’sup?” Zito asked, looking vaguely irritated the way he always did when he was talking to Crosby, interesting thing to notice now of all times.

“So, um.” Crosby squinted, the sun taking up half the sky over Zito’s left shoulder. “About Mark.”

Zito blinked real slow and then echoed flatly, “Mark.”

“Mulder.”

“Yes.”

Crosby held his breath a little bit. “I didn’t want you to think that I was, like, not cool with you and him. Because I definitely am. I feel, like, fuck it. We all know, why pretend?”

Zito looked at him in astonishment for a minute, and then laughed and cupped the back of Crosby’s neck. “I keep forgetting that this is your first time doing this. God, it’s _adorable_.”

Crosby was pretty sure that was a dig of some kind, but he was feeling poled by the light and the emptiness of the stadium and Zito’s hand just under his shirt collar.

“What you gotta understand, kid,” Zito told him, rubbing his thumb a little bit and looking at him concernedly like they were having a Moment, “is that you can’t really compare me and Mulder to you and Mulder. We’re just, we’re not even the same thing.”

And Zito said it all in a careful condescending tone that made it clear where the advantage lay in that consideration, and then let him go without ceremony, flicking Crosby’s ear and smiling easily.

“So don’t let it bug you so much.”

Crosby had no sort of answer to that. Zito had five years and Crosby had five months. They weren’t even speaking the same language.

The next time Mulder rolled in at two in the morning with his shirt half unbuttoned and a hickey on his throat, Crosby let him in even though Mulder smelled like bourbon, which, of all the people in the motherfucking world, happened to be Barry Zito’s favorite drink.

Crosby usually let Mulder do whatever he wanted.

*

None of them were gay, which was the weird thing. Well. One of the weird things. Zito still fucked models and people who were more famous than him, and no one was quite able to establish whether Alyssa Milano was his beard or he was hers, but the two of them seemed to share a comfortable, fuck-who-you-want-but-come-to-club-openings-with-me understanding of the situation, and it seemed to be working out okay.

Mulder, it turned out, hadn’t slept with a woman in almost a year. This according to Eric Chavez, who was the guy who would know. He explained it one night, not to Crosby but to Rich Harden—Crosby just happened to be right outside the open door.

“Mulder’s not a fag, he’s just tired of dealing with chicks. More effort, you know? Why bother when you get blown anyway?”

Crosby thought that sounded remarkably self-aware of Mulder, and therefore doubted the truth of it.

Anyway, pretty much the whole team knew about Mulder and Zito, except for Hudson, who steadfastly refused to even consider the idea of it. It was too fucked up for him, or maybe Hudson just knew how it was going to end and didn’t want to pay too much attention, in case he started to worry about the two of them.

Nobody really said anything, it was officially a secret, but everyone knew. That was another way Mulder and Zito weren’t like Mulder and Crosby. As far as Bobby could tell, Zito was the only man on the team who knew about them, and he only knew because Mulder didn’t lie to Zito, never had and probably never would.

Crosby was the real secret. But he was pretty sure that was only because everybody already cared about Mulder and Zito, had some vested interest in their fucking soap opera subplot, and nobody gave a shit about him.

Again, five months and five years. How could he even be expected to compete?

Crosby wasn’t sure why no one could tell about him, though. A spring and summer spent living right in the heart of this goddamn team, and he was still getting away with it. Chavez actually introduced him to his little sister, which, like, had never before happened to any boy, ever, in the history of time.

Fucking a teammate, a roommate, he’d done both those before, but never more than a one night stand sort of arrangement, a locker room, hotel room, hall closet existence, momentary and ill-considered. Long Beach State and the Pacific Coast League, but whatever he did back there was just short of violence, hardly counted at all. This should be some big gay revelation for Bobby Crosby, because he hadn’t fucked anyone other than Mark Mulder in almost two months. Pretty soon, this would be the kind of thing that was going to hurt.

Didn’t matter. It’d always been like this. From day one, not even at spring training this year, but last September, when he’d got called up after the ‘Cats won the title. And he’d seen Mark Mulder, sitting on the outfield grass watching the guys run, he’d seen Mark Mulder jumping off the bench to his feet without thinking when something good happened, until his hip splintered again and he got yelled at.

He’d seen Mark Mulder and that was pretty much it.

So, as long as the guys had known him, they’d known the Bobby Crosby who was totally helpless as far as Mulder was concerned, so this was definitely nothing new.

Crosby dreamt of switchblades, and woke up in Texas. They were back in their division again, right where they’d started, and they’d stay here until the end of the season. Crosby still couldn’t hit but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do that would keep him from getting the award.

Zito and Mulder came down in the elevator together, Zito smirking and winking at Crosby, but Mulder handed him a Powerbar on the bus like it was nothing, and ended up necking with Crosby in the equipment room at the Ballpark a couple hours later.

Things moved real fast here at the end. The angle of the incline kept getting sharper and sharper. Mulder shifted and gripped him like he was falling. Mulder pitched with this pained look on his face, and his back was fine, his hip was fine, he was fucking _fine_ , so lay off.

No talking about Mulder’s latest outing or Joe Blanton, and no talking about Bobby’s strikeout total and drop in the order, just total focus on what they _could_ do right, the last thing, the only thing they were any good at these days.

By the time they left Seattle, having gone 3-6 on the trip and heading home for the last weekend of the season, Crosby didn’t care who knew or what they called him. He could not go through this alone and he wasn’t going to try.

He found himself next to Mulder on the plane, and Mulder drank two rum and cokes in fifteen minutes and then fell asleep, breathing heavily and slouched over towards Crosby’s side. Crosby rested his head on the wall and stared out the little window, seeing the reflection of Mulder’s legs, his hands.

*

They didn’t make it. Crosby just sort of assumed that they would, postseason play was their due reward, their birthright, but probably that was the point of the lesson. Don’t count on anything.

Falling a single game short, that was a very long way from fair. That was this awful breaking thing, and even worse was the first game of the set against Anaheim, Mulder’s start at home, and everything that went wrong in that one.

They got home that night and Mulder holed up in his room, the door locked and Crosby knew he was wearing his headphones because he didn’t answer the knocking. Crosby lay in bed listening for sounds of life in the next room, and thought, ‘please zito please,’ and it was some kind of perfect for Crosby to be praying in Barry Zito’s name tonight, that the success or failure of Bobby Crosby’s rookie year was now resting on Zito’s shoulders, of everyone who could be responsible for this.

Mulder made no noise and didn’t crawl into Crosby’s bed in the middle of the night, and Zito lost the next day, and they were knocked out.

Mulder disappeared that night, too. Nobody wanted to go out or anything, and Hudson had intentionally spent time with both Mulder and Zito in the clubhouse after the game, clapping them on the shoulder and saying, “Boy, I tell ya,” and then nothing else. Crosby saw Mulder get in his car and drive without hesitation to the highway, taking the wrong exit and heading north, towards the bridge.

Crosby snuck into Mulder’s room after Harden passed out, hid in his bed and was woken up several hours later by Mulder’s hands rolling him over, Mulder whispering, “it’s over now, you know that, we’re done.” Mulder didn’t say “last time,” but it meant pretty much the same thing.

Crosby got them all tied together, legs and arms and Mulder’s hand pressed flat to the bare skin of Crosby’s back, his mouth open on Crosby’s shoulder.

They stayed there till morning, and Mulder didn’t even get mad at him for not going back to his own room. Mulder stirred against his back and a little time passed and then Mulder’s arm tightened and let go, pushing away from Crosby. Mulder petted him a few times on the head distractedly, then got up. Crosby kept his eyes shut and heard Mulder pulling on his sweats and a T-shirt, coughing and swearing softly under his breath.

Crosby waited till Mulder left the room, closing the door behind him, before nervously slipping out and back down the hall, collapsing into his own bed and imagining that he’d been here the whole night, never even moved.

*

The season was over and Mulder was back in Scottsdale by the end of the week and Bobby Crosby ended up watching the playoffs alone with Harden in their house, and he’d really expected this to be a bigger moment in his life, that being in pain like this would call a spotlight out of his heart, but actually he just felt invisible and so scared he couldn’t breathe, more tired than he’d ever been.

The Red Sox won the World Series, and Harden said, “huh.” Crosby nodded, watched the St. Louis Cardinals in a defeated row in their dugout, blood-red uniforms and hard veteran faces. The Cards were now trivia forever, who did the Sox beat to break the curse, except in New England where they’ll call it the Curse. Bobby thought that no one in the world could look good in that color red.

Midway through November, Mulder called and told him, “I’m in Van Nuys. You should come get me.”

Bobby was back in Long Beach by that time, and he didn’t even say anything, though it was two in the morning and Barry Zito lived in Van Nuys. He drove across the city and picked Mulder up at the gas station down the street from Zito’s house. Mulder had his medium-sized duffel with him, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved or showered in a week.

He slumped in the passenger’s seat and closed his eyes like he was asleep. Crosby kept fantasizing about the different ways Zito could have thrown him out. They were just south of Inglewood when Crosby said stupidly:

“You know, it’d be a lot simpler if he wasn’t involved.”

Mulder didn’t answer for awhile, and Crosby held the wheel so tight the leather creaked.

“He’s always gonna be involved. No matter what.”

Crosby swallowed. “For me, you know, it’s. It’s just you.”

Mulder sighed. “I know,” he said, and they stayed quiet until they were back at the ocean, Crosby tossing Mulder’s duffel on top of the dresser in his room and pushing Mulder onto the bed without even pulling the drapes closed first.

It was absolutely the best time Bobby Crosby could remember, it was this clear balance between Mulder being drunk and Crosby being half-asleep, both of them moving slowly, with all the world on their side, and Mulder smiling against his shoulder blade, licking the back of his neck.

And neither of them said it because neither of them knew, but, yeah, last time, for real.

*

Mulder went back to Scottsdale and they were just friends again, talking with no great urgency or obligation, and Crosby was still trying his best to be funny and cool and make Mulder like him, even after all this time, still just a dumb fucking kid with a crush.

When Hudson got traded, Mulder called him late on the night the news had broke, after Crosby had already talked to everybody else, talked to Hudson and heard him say in a strange uneven voice, “Don’t let them turn you all soft, kid, all right?” Crosby promised he wouldn’t. He decided that he was gonna miss the fuck out of Hudson.

Mulder called way after that and woke him up, and three a.m. phone calls were always either drunk friends or fatal car accidents, so Bobby was relieved to hear Mulder slurring and calling him “baby” the way he only did when he was too wrecked to stand.

Mulder tried to have phone sex with him and ended up falling asleep in the middle, and Crosby snickered, fell asleep grinning. The next day, he called Mulder and made fun of him and his hangover, and then they talked seriously about Tim Hudson and Mulder said, “I’m more worried about Barry, tell you the truth. It’s, like, his life goal to get Hudson to fuck him.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Mulder laughed. “Of course it’ll never happen. I mean, it was never gonna, even before this. Hudson doesn’t do that shit, but, well. You know Zito and his fucking reach-for-the-stars thing.”

Crosby closed his eyes and counted to three, before saying casually, “You should come see me.”

Mulder laughed again, sounding the exact same. “Hey man, I got a fucking rotation to lead now. You think I got time for your ass?”

Crosby stammered and felt sick, and changed the subject, hung up as soon as he could, and they didn’t talk again until Mulder got traded two days later.

*

Crosby drank for five solid hours, then somehow ended up at Zito’s house in Van Nuys, pounding on the door and hollering up at the windows, his throat feeling slick and smooth and every word rolling out on oiled bearings.

Zito opened the door in board shorts and nothing else, flopping long hair that hadn’t been cut since April, bare feet and the puka-shell bracelet around his wrist, but no watch, just the tan line.

Crosby almost fell into him, warm stomach-skin against his forearm and then Zito pushing him back up, balancing him carefully.

“What, what’re we,” Crosby mumbled, everything come loose from its fittings. “What’re we gonna do, man?”

Zito half-carried him down the hall and deposited him on the couch. “’Bout what?” he asked, yawning and rubbing a hand through his hair.

Crosby blinked wetly and tilted towards Zito, Zito would understand, Zito was the only other one who knew. “Without him. How’re we suppose’ta be, like, how we are?”

Zito looked at him for awhile, sorting that out, then smiled, rasping his hand across Crosby’s head. Crosby turned into it, a little bit, pushing his head forward and up into Zito’s palm, all broad and circling.

“Aw. You’re just all sorts of a mess.”

Crosby shook his head vehemently, knocking Zito’s hand off, and growled. “I. I am fine. Fine. It just seems. Like a big. Uh. Change. Real big.”

Not looking like he believed much of that, Zito got up and got Crosby a glass of water. He drank it messily, dripping off the line of his jaw and wetting the front of his shirt a bit. Zito leaned back against the couch arm and said with his arms crossed over his chest, “Look, it’s not, like, unheard of to be all fucked up because of Mark Mulder.”

Crosby put his glass on the coffee table and it promptly fell off the edge, rolling towards his feet. He looked down at it and he was for some reason blinking back tears. “I’m not. Listen. How do you—you’re just gonna let him go, aren’t you?”

“Don’t have a whole lot of choice, rook.”

“You can’t call me that anymore.” Zito rolled his eyes. Crosby continued haltingly, “You don’t. It’s like you don’t care. Which, like. How come you’ve been with him for so long?”

Zito shrugged, eyeing him intently. “I guess that is how.”

Crosby stared at his hands, and whispered, mostly to himself, “How the fuck do you _do_ that?”

Zito touched his arm, stroked his fingers down to Crosby’s elbow. “Here, lemme-” and Zito cut himself off, leaned in and then he was kissing Crosby, stupid drunk Crosby with his sure-firing nerves and the weight of Zito’s hands on his stomach, Zito stripping off his shirt and saying into Crosby’s throat, “I’ll show you, pay attention, this is how.”

Crosby thought of all the things Zito could do that he couldn’t, leave and come back and lay his hands on Mulder in anger, and remember what Mulder was like at twenty-two years old, and know that everybody was fucking around on everybody else and still be able to sleep at night, and all Crosby could do was search for pieces of Mulder in Zito, thinking that with as much history as they shared, there had to be something left behind, there had to be a memory he could take home as his own.

*

Crosby left before morning, and cursed himself and wept on the highway. He went down to the beach two blocks away from his house and ran up and down the sand all afternoon, until his calves burned and his chest felt close to giving under the pressure.

He thought about three months from now, this suddenly unfamiliar team of his, and he thought of Zito twisting up and holding Crosby’s head in his hands and things that were different and things that were the same.

He tried to buy a bottle of whiskey and got carded, of all the idiotic things to happen. Of course he didn’t have his ID on him, he didn’t carry that shit during the off-season. He had to go all the way home and dig around for it, finding it eventually with some Polaroids in an inside pocket of his road trip bag, and it wasn’t until he was cracking the bottle at a stoplight that Mulder called, said dully, “You fucking piece of shit,” and then hung up.

And right there, mark it, Crosby’s life was over, because Barry Zito didn’t know how to recognize a fucking secret when it pushed him to his knees.

Crosby pulled into an empty parking lot, took a few pulls, and tried calling Mulder back for a half an hour with no luck, and then he called Zito and screamed into his voicemail, “You FUCK!” and then kind of broke down a little before he was able to get it together and drive home.

He kept trying to call Mulder and eventually Zito left a decidedly unapologetic message, “Dude, fucking chill, it’s not like he cares,” but that was the problem, that was the only problem that Bobby Crosby had ever had.

*

And so Crosby drove though the night to Arizona, with the moon falling away behind him, blind-drunk and numb and mostly crazy. He found Mulder’s condo, where Crosby was supposed to maybe-stay in the spring, the rooms he’d never be in again, the windows showing trees he’d never see. He punched the outside wall until his knuckles smeared over with blood, then passed out in front of the door, shaking because it was kinda cold out here at night.

Mulder came out at a little past ten in the morning, and Crosby opened his eyes to see Mulder standing with one leg to either side of his body, looking down at him and locking the door. Crosby put his hand on Mulder’s leg, scratching at his jeans, but Mulder kicked him away. He looked pretty pissed.

“Go home, Bobby,” Mulder told him, and stepped all the way over, chipping Crosby’s side with his shoe. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“Mulder,” Crosby said hoarsely, sitting up with the skin of his face flattened and raw from the ground. His shoulder hurt, his cheek hurt, and this was his life now, he couldn’t stand it. He wasn’t going to be able to take this much longer. “Hey man, wait, you gotta wait.”

But Mulder was already out in the sunshine, putting on his sunglasses and beeping his car unlocked, and he didn’t even look back, not once.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a sports slash lyric wheel challenge. My prompt was "Song for Roger Maris," by the Mountain Goats.
> 
> When the power of God shows up in your swing  
> And the people start to notice  
> And you can't do anything about it  
> And they all come to see you  
> And they start to crowd around  
> Let me tell you, brother   
> You can feel it coming down
> 
> I got an angel watching over me  
> A monkey on my back  
> The devil at my heels  
> Reporters breathing down my neck
> 
> My father always told me  
> To finish what you start  
> But my wife's about to leave me  
> And it's going to break my heart  
> And I no longer have my youth  
> I no longer have my looks  
> I got a goddamn one-way ticket  
> To the goddamn history books
> 
> And I got an angel watching over me  
> A monkey on my back  
> The devil at my heels  
> Reporters breathing down my neck


End file.
